Aliens in the Mind

[UBERDOINK]

Interesting article, you may have seen it before, and a different viewpoint:

Close encounters of the mind kind

"ALIEN abduction is probably all in the mind, according to research presented today.

A new study supports the theory that people who claim to have contact with aliens are psychologically vulnerable to false memories.

... Professor Chris French, head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths College in London has suggested that this type of contact with alien life may be all in the mind.

Prof French carried out the study by comparing 19 alleged "abductees" and 19 random volunteers.

He found that in psychological tests, so-called "experiencers" scored more highly in a number of areas, including belief in the paranormal, a tendency to hallucinate, and "dissociative" tendencies which can lead to altered states of consciousness.

This could account for all the high strangeness surrounding UFO reports, and honestly, is much MORE sensible than "aliens from other worlds" isn't it?

full article:
WalesOnline - News - Wales News - Close encounters of the mind kind

 

[UBERDOINK]

Also fascinating case, about someone that visited Mystery Park in Sweden which sounds like a VERY cool amusement park that is all about UFO's, and Paranormal stuff.

Summary:
An alien-related theme park (Mystery Park) has recently opened in Switzerland. We report on a 27-year old patient
who developed a short psychotic reaction after visiting the park. As depersonalization/derealization phenomena have
repeatedly been reported in OCD patients and neurobiological similarities have been described, and considering a history
of OCD in our patient, the psychotic reaction is hypothesized to possibly represent an exacerbation of the OCD
symptoms.In view of the highly suggestible content of the exhibition, one could worry about the influence on particularly
vulnerable subjects, especially on those in search of existential answers, and those vulnerable to develop delusional ideas

Full case:
http://www.gjpsy.uni-goettingen.de/gjp-article-zullino.pdf

 

[threed]

One could argue that, like religions of old, this phenomenon is a manifestation of modern fears and emotional needs. Certainly, as an example, some sorts of trauma are beyond the subject's abilities to process (like being sexually abused by a parent, for instance). And to insulate yourself, your backbrain replaces the [UNMENTIONABLE] with something more bearable (particularly a dissociative fantasy that relieves you of guilt or supposed complicity...).

Reality may be objective, but your observations of that reality are entirely subjective. And the brain can both insert and delete visual information (under the right conditions, with the correct stimulus). This is why eyewitness testimony is almost entirely worthless (at least, unless you can obtain it from multiple witnesses with provably no connection and no post-experience contamination).

On the other hand...

 

[UBERDOINK]

this phenomenon is a manifestation of modern fears and emotional needs.

That could be partially a true statement, but to be clear, the studies are mostly referencing delusional personalities themselves and the various potential triggers.

The subset of the phychological disorder may remain dormant and not disturb life or that persons ability to acquire success, BUT a delusion that expresses itself in belief in Aliens.

"Hypnotic suggestibility, memory distortion, depressive
symptoms, and schizotypic features have been reported to
be significant predictors of false recall and false recognition
in people reporting abduction from aliens (Chequers et al.,
1997; Clancy et al., 2002; Spanos et al., 1993)."

in the second case I pointed out, they do realize that the patient didn't have the above symptoms but:

"Besides a possible suggestibility, none of these symptoms could be
found in our patient. However, also in our case, pre-existent
psychiatric (i.e. obsessive-compulsive) symptoms were
found."

So, could paranormal and specifically belief in Aliens be a common pshycolocical disorder.

"The findings were backed by Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, director of the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology, who suggested claims of alien contact were derived from a desire to believe in extra-terrestrial life.

"It's some kind of instinctive need to link up with life outside Earth, but the experiences that are recorded by these people are factors of the imagination. They have had the sensation of an encounter, but it can not be quantified or substantiated."

 

[tyder001]

Well I'm delusional and I've never seen an alien! So there Mr. Science!

 

[DavidRavenMoon]

a tendency to hallucinate

A tendency to hallucinate? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

Also how do we know when said person is hallucinating they aren't actually seeing something?

I had a close friend, and she was as normal as they come. She once told me when she was younger, she saw a large nose on the wall, and it was talking to her! She didn't understand it, but was sure of what she saw.

This same person however didn't believe in UFOs. She was a massage therapist and worked with an elderly couple who was experiencing a disk landing in their back yard, and they would watch small being get out and walk around. She didn't believe them, even though she said they were nice sincere people... but she believe the nose because she saw it.

The alien abduction phenomenon happens all over the world and the details are always remarkably the same.

Dr. John Mack (a psychiatrist, and Professor at the Harvard University School of Medicine) had no interest in UFOs, but studied 200 men and women who reported recurrent alien encounter experiences. He said these people were not delusional nor did they have a tendency to hallucinate.

He said: "I take them seriously. I don't have a way to account for them."

"I would never say, yes, there are aliens taking people. [But] I would say there is a compelling powerful phenomenon here that I can't account for in any other way, that's mysterious. Yet I can't know what it is but it seems to me that it invites a deeper, further inquiry".

So one report by someone who seems to want to come up with an answer does not answer the question about alien abduction.

Odd things happen to people every day, and that does not mean they are hallucinating.

 

[UBERDOINK]

Odd things happen to people every day, and that does not mean they are hallucinating.

Or does it?

I do agree, I question everything even scientists and their studies.

BUT this study for example...

Hallucinations are not restricted to the mentally ill or those under the influence of psychotropic drugs. They are actually rather common, and are often experienced by healthy people under various circumstances. They can also be evoked in various ways. The Czech anatomist Jan Evangeliste Purkinje, one of the founding fathers of modern neuroscience, realized this at an early age

 

[conor]

INterrrrestingggggggggg, vvvvvvvverrrrrrrrrry, innnnteresting.

I have often thought that abduction experiences happen to people who are particularly prone to experiencing a kind of manifestation of something which is occupying many people (ie. religion). That does not make them crazy in any way. But perhaps the same rules should not apply to them as they apply to everybody else, ie. hypnosis may be the wrong route take with people who have an abduction experience.

 

[threed]

I think our pride gets in the way and we resent the implication of insanity. But this is not about insanity per se, but some of the shortcomings we all share in the ways that our brains function. (In truth, no one is completely rational. I mean, what is that?)

Nevertheless, because of the nature of brain function and how it impacts what we see and hear, indeed, one must take both the abduction experience (and religion in general) with a grain of zoloft.

But does that negate that some experiences may be genuine? Not really. However, it may influence our determination of probabilty. And probability is the best we ever have.

Karl Jung was interested in the UFO phenomenon because of what it could reveal about the same mental processes that formerly gave us such things as christianity...

 

[conor]

I think our pride gets in the way and we resent the implication of insanity. But this is not about insanity per se, but some of the shortcomings we all share in the ways that our brains function. (In truth, no one is completely rational. I mean, what is that?)

Perhaps we should be envious of such people - they would be getting a glimpse of pure culture. I don't know what else could be the highest form of culture. Always problems arise when the tool of science is brought in to explain such phenonema, and I think it always will in it's current form. The basis of science is cause and effect. This phenonema seems to defy this basic principle. Now, either there are very complex cause and effect forces going on which we cannot detect, or cause and effect is literally being defied in this phenonema. It reminds me of quantum uncertainty - you can never say exactly where an electron is, just where it is most likely to be.

 

[UBERDOINK]

when looking at false memory development it does seem to have striking similarities to Alien abduction or encounters:

"memory is reconstructive, and not reproductive, in nature. In retrieval, a memory is pieced together from fragments, but during the reconstruction errors creep in due to our own biases and expectations.

Generally, these errors are small, so despite not being completely accurate, our memories are usually reliable.

Occasionally, there are too many errors, and the memory becomes unreliable. In extreme cases, memories can be completely false.

False memory, or confabulation, is completely unintentional, and can occur spontaneously due, for example, to the suggestive power of a leading question or a doctored photograph. It can also following frontal lobe damage due to tumours, head injuries, or ruptured arteries."

This for example means that our media, and people that have a preestablished belief in UFO's or even just exposed to them by their interviewer may have false memories created just by the questions being asked.


What I thought could also relate to contactee's:

An early description of confabulation is given by the Russian neuropsychiatrist Sergei Korsakoff, who recognized it in chronic alcoholics, and describes it (and the severe amnesia that is also associated with chronic alcoholism), as follows:

This mental disorder appears at times in the form of sharply delineated irritable weakness of the mental sphere, at times in the form of confusion with characteristic mistakes in orientation for place, time and situation, and at times as an almost pure form of acute amnesia, where the recent memory is most severely involved, while the remote memory is well preserved . . . Some have suffered so widespread memory loss that they literally forget everything immediately.

Isn't that similar to the lost time accounts, that people under hypnosis later "remember" what happened to them.

 

[UBERDOINK]

Something else to consider about hallucinations, I don't think we know all the things that could temporarly cause them.

Reading a medical journal I came across these story's about people simply taking antibiotics:

"I have had daytime hallucinations while on the antibiotic Doxycycline during the treatment for neuro Lyme disease.

The actual hallucinations were preceeded by ever increasing and vivid dreams, lucid dreams and eventually night terrors."

another:

"When I took it, my apartment all of a sudden turned into a haunted apartment. It was really trippy and very vivid. I was scared. I was seeing things that I knew were not possible.

I remember looking into my large ESPRIT purse and instead of the normal there was someones chopped off head in MY purse.

I was too freaked out and decided to stop taking the Doxycycline."

 

[Drew UK]

Every component in the world will alter our state - by some way or another.

Caffeine, Codeine, Anti-histamine, deoxycycline?

I ask one simple question - for all we can prove on statistical analysis - is there a direct relationship between mind altering drugs/toxins to the abduction phenomenon?

Give me a straight line - Dr Uberdoink!!

 

[Jonah]

Spaceman

It started with a low light,
Next thing I knew they ripped me from my bed
And then they took my blood type
It left a strange impression in my head.
You know that I was hoping,
That I could leave this star-crossed world behind
But when they cut me open,
I guess I changed my mind.

And you know I might
Have just flown too far from the floor this time
Cause they're calling me by my name
And the zipping white light beams
Disregards the bombs and satellites

That was the turning point
That was one lonely night

The song maker says, "It ain't so bad"
The dream maker's gonna make you mad
The spaceman says, "Everybody look down
Its all in your mind"

Well now I'm back at home, and
I'm looking forward to this life I live
You know its gonna haunt me
So hesitation to this life I give.
You think you might cross over,
You're caught between the devil and the deep blue sea
You better look it over,
Before you make that leap

And you know I'm fine,
But I hear those voices at night sometimes-
They justify my claim,
And the public don't dwell my transmission
Cause it wasn't televised

But, it was the turning point,
Oh what a lonely night

The song maker says, "It ain't so bad"
The dream maker's gonna make you mad
The spaceman says, "Everybody look down
Its all in your mind"

The song maker says, "It ain't so bad"
The dream maker's gonna make you mad;
The spaceman says, "Everybody look down
Its all in your mind"

My global position systems are vocally addressed
They say the Nile used to run from East to West,
They say the Nile used to run...
From East to West.

And you know I'm fine
But I hear those voices at night
Sometimes...

The song maker says, "It ain't so bad"
The dream maker's gonna make you mad
The spaceman says, "Everybody look down
Its all in your mind"
The song maker says, "It ain't so bad"
The dream maker's gonna make you mad;
The spaceman says, "Everybody look down
Its all in your mind"

It's all in my mind
It's all in my mind
It's all in my mind
It's all in my mind
It's all in my mind

~ The Killers

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7lqsa_rock-band-spaceman-the-killers-guit_videogames

 

[conor]

It's all in my mind
It's all in my mind
It's all in my mind
It's all in my mind
It's all in my mind

The question for would then be this - what exactly constitutes the mind of an individual? That to me is the real Holy Grail of exploring all these phenomena. And it is by no means belittling anyone who had any such experience. Perhaps a "mind" can in some way interact with the physical world under certain circumstances on some level (mythology, perhaps)?

 

[aaronpsych]

One would think that if an individual had experienced an abduction they would have a belief in the paranormal. That appears to be a chicken and egg argument.

Also dissociation often occurs in individuals who have undergone some form of trauma. Here i could just as easily state that evidence of dissociation supports an abduction experience. I have worked with many individuals who hallucinate, have delusions and have undergone severe dissociation reactions. None of these people have reported alien abduction phenomena. This phenomena then should not be so easily linked to such mental states.

If we have not established a clear baseline we can't state whether any mental factors uncovered are the result of a real abduction or mental impairment. There is also a clinical body of work that shows that individuals who have undergone extreme experiences remember the experience vividly.

As psychological research is based on statistics we have to be cautious in arriving at cause and effect assumptions.

 

[UBERDOINK]

OHere i could just as easily state that evidence of dissociation supports an abduction experience.

Wouldn't occams Razor apply? the most logical answer is the right one... and it's more logical to question crazy sounding statements as being the effects of temporary warping in that persons reality, than to believe aliens really need anal probe data.

The direct links aren't there, only because no one studies them I think. But check out the PDF i posted in the beginning it talks about a spontaneous break by a patient because of a UFO exhibit they went to, with out having prior symptoms of psychosis.

 

[aaronpsych]

At our present level of knowledge it may be true to assume that mental disorder is the most logical reason. However, this is still an assumption. These research papers appear to assume that there is a mental disorder cause for the abduction phenomena. They then tie their findings to this assumption, which I have a problem with. A single case study does not generalise to the population or to the mass of reported abduction episodes. Further, any psychological research is nearly useless without establishing a pre-abduction mental state baseline in the participant.

It appears as though at our current level of knowledge a multi-disciplinary approach is required. For example, carbon monoxide poisoning can lead to delusions but would not be controlled for in pure psych research. It would definitely be an interesting thesis!

 

[aNorthernSoul]

I don't think I'd ever quote the Killers to make a point. I'm just saying...

 

[threed]

Jacobs and Hopkins are very pessimistic about the future of humanity in light of their abduction research. But the more I consider it the more optimistic I am becoming.

As a waking dream of our collective unconscious, what does the abduction experience reveal to us? It shows that we all fear the Singularity and the unknown world that lies ahead.

We see ourselves being abducted into a future that seems entirely alien and dehumanizing. Our future selves are, at first, insectoid and hive-like. The process of our transition seems invasive and fearful.

But our own subconscious insists that we have "skin-to-skin" contact. Gradually, we begin to see ourselves in this future world and the aliens are becoming more humanized (hybrids). More and more, we see ourselves learning to perform tasks and fulfill roles in this future world. Still it seems invasive and involuntary, but more and more we are seeing ourselves there -- at a point beyond the Singularity.

It is the mythic process by which we come to embrace the future. And, as always, it appears that our humanity will prevail.